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Sculpture in transformation: a study of the work of Alice Maher, Maud Cotter and Siobhán Hapaska since the 1990s
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Date
2024
Authors
Kelleher, Sarah
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University College Cork
Published Version
Abstract
The 1980s mark the beginning of a distinct cultural shift in Irish art practice, when artists began to embrace new media techniques and to confront their audience with the presence of the artist's body - advances that were largely pioneered by women. This tectonic shift, in the words of Alice Maher, opened up ‘a whole new field’ for art practice, one less hidebound by tradition and unburdened by the weight of the past. Increasingly politicised by the Troubles in the North as well as the assertion and consolidation of conservative values in the Republic, a generation of women turned to sculpture to engage with ideas of gender, identity, territory and marginality in process-based works that prioritised a haptic or felt rather than simply optic materiality. This thesis focuses on the material complexity and inventiveness that characterise ambitious sculptural practice in Ireland at the end of the 20th Century, foregrounding the ways in which an expanded approach to materials, motivated and informed by feminist politics, in turn activates an expanded set of spectatorial relations. The thesis is structured as three case studies which examine the work of Alice Maher, Maud Cotter and Siobhán Hapaska, and positions a selection of sculptural objects and installations as potently oppositional, critical, and insistently material interventions within a historical and cultural moment preoccupied by transformation and national identity. My research offers the first sustained engagement with the work of Maud Cotter and Siobhán Hapaska, both of whom have been neglected by the scholarly literature, despite the significance of their practices which have been recognised both nationally and internationally. My chapter on Alice Maher offers a concerted reassessment of her work, arguing that her practice has been insufficiently contextualised within the political, social, and cultural context in which she was operating. Throughout the three chapters I use queer feminist theory to inform my reading of work which reflects changed understandings of sexuality and identity and which critiques monolithic notions of Irishness.
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Controlled Access
Keywords
Irish art , Sculpture , 1990s , Alice Maher , Maud Cotter , Siobhán Hapaska , Feminist politics , Queer theory , Affect theory , The Troubles , Emigration , Celtic Tiger
Citation
Kelleher, S. 2024. Sculpture in transformation: a study of the work of Alice Maher, Maud Cotter and Siobhán Hapaska since the 1990s. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.